Star Wars with occasional sarcasm
On Jimmy Kimmel Live last night, Solo’s Donald Glover talked about pursuing the role of Lando Calrissian and meeting Billy Dee Williams, not reading analysis of this ‘This Is America’ video, singing with Stevie Wonder and his first and favorite albums
Continue reading “Donald Glover on why he wanted to play Lando”
Today from Entertainment Weekly’s Solo coverage, an interview with Donald Glover on Lando Calrissian, meeting with Billy Dee Williams, being a snappy dresser, and working with puppeteers.
For more about Glover himself, Atlanta, and his own history with Star Wars and Lando, check out Esquire’s cover story.
Although the casinos of Canto Bight might seem like the perfect place to find Billy Dee Williams’ Lando Calrissian, director Rian Johnson confirms that the character won’t appear in The Last Jedi.
“No, and I don’t want fans to get their hopes up. He’s not in the film and it was never really something that came up. I mean, I loved that character. It would have been fun to see him, but it’s just not something that ever really had a place in the story.”
Maybe Lando went fully respectable in his old age? In any case, we’re not finding out just yet. We’ll see a young Lando, played by Donald Glover, in next year’s Solo.
Hayden Christensen will be returning to Celebration for the first time since 2002 as part of the 40th Anniversary panel, joining Mark Hamill, Ian McDiarmid, Billy Dee Williams, Anthony Daniels, Peter Mayhew, Dave Filoni and Kathleen Kennedy. “Many galactic-sized surprises” are still being promised, but this is a fairly big one. (And yes, he’s signing.)
In other Celebration news, there’s now more previews up for the Store, mostly t-shirts.
The young Han Solo movie is casting for a “Chance” – aka Lando Calrissian, The Wrap reports today. With Chewbacca and (probably) the Millennium Falcon on board, it seems likely that we could be getting the tale of how Han won the ship from Lando in the first place.
UPDATE: According to Birth Movies Death, Donald Glover (Community, The Martian) is the first choice for the role.
Like Han, these are gonna be tough shoes to fill. We first met Lando, as played by Billy Dee Williams, in The Empire Strikes Back. (Empire screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan penned the script to the new film with his son Jon.) Williams has reprised the role recently on Rebels.
In less rumory news, co-director Chris Miller shared on Twitter a picture of him and Philip Lord on the Falcon set. (Presumably Episode VIII’s.) We do know they auditioned Alden Ehrenreich and other finalists for the role of Han on the Falcon set.
Backstage at Celebration, Mark Hamill chats with James Arnold Taylor about Star Wars and shared some family photos from the Return of the Jedi set. (The Force Awakens stuff starts at 7:20. #Beardwatch!)
A bunch of other Celebration videos have gone up over the past few days as well, most pulls from the livestream, including interviews with Billy Dee Williams, Ray Park, Joel Aron, Doug Chiang and Christian Alzmann, among others. And then there’s con highlights that played during the Closing Ceremonies…
‘Special guests’ will be at J.J. Abrams and Kathleen Kennedy’s Thursday panel. I suspect they will be The Force Awakens folk of the younger generation. (Or, pretty much anyone who’s not Harrison Ford.)
Also added to the Celebration guest list today are Billy Dee Williams, Ashley Eckstein and more. The exhibitor list is live as well.
Lando came to town in tonight’s Rebels, “Idiot’s Array.” Does Lando lend a certain something to the show? Are we down with the canon pronunciation of “sabacc?” And how jealous are we of Pablo’s sweet VII jacket?
Lando Calrissian is probably Rebel’s worst-kept secret – particularly since the episode in question, ‘Idiot’s Array’ went up on the Disney XD site/app this morning. But, if you were waiting for official word, here it is via Entertainment Weekly: Billy Dee Williams is the latest to reprise his film character for the cartoon.
‘Idiot’s Array’ will air on Disney XD proper next Monday.
Billy Dee Williams is indeed in Rebels, per himself. Gasp!